


Like a Rock in the Course

by Storylandqueen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Leviathan Castiel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storylandqueen/pseuds/Storylandqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean keeps moving because he has to, because the moment he stops, everything will go to shit. If he stops, it becomes real and he can't have it become real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Rock in the Course

Tick, tick, tock.

There’s a clock somewhere, ticking away merrily in the darkness of the cheap motel room and it makes a different nose when it strikes twelve. It’s not significant, or it shouldn’t be, but it feels like it is because it’s all Dean can hear, all he can feel reverberating inside his head.

There are other noises in the room, but they all fall away, lost beneath the rhythmic motions of the second hand. Sam’s fast asleep in the other bed, the sound of his soft snores serving as a background to the clock and somehow the difference in the two noises acts as an amplifier for the clock.

It seems to mind his thoughts for him, syncing them up with the sway of time and inserting pauses into the flow of his consciousness, which only makes the crushing feeling of nothingness settle more firmly on his chest. It feels like choking after your lungs have collapsed.

He can’t sleep, feels like he can’t even move because he’s pinned down by emotions he doesn’t want to name, let alone talk about. He hates the quiet that makes the clock seem so loud and he almost hates the dark because he can imagine so many things filling it, not all of them monsters.

He’s a Winchester, disciple of Hell’s best interrogator and Heaven’s Righteous Man. He’s not afraid of a clock or the fucking dark. Dean pries himself out of the narrow bed and pads barefoot across the room to the clock, pulling it off the wall and taking it to the bathroom where he throws it in the tub.

Shutting the door, he moves across the room again, this time to his duffel so he can dig out the bottle of alcohol before setting down near the window. He unscrews the lid and raises the bottle to his lips, the liquid burning his throat as he swallows and waits for the dawn.

~

Drip, drip, drop

There’s blood on his shirt and on his face, but there was also blood in his mouth and even though he spat it out, the taste’s still there and that’s the part that Dean just cannot take.

The monster had been a kid, a cute little girl with blonde pigtails, and really it’s a wonder that Dean doesn’t have a phobia of children after Lilith, but he doesn’t. He still looks at them and hopes, maybe even wants, and it’s so painful because he knows better than to believe that’s for him anymore.

He shot the little girl right in her forehead. An innocent little girl dead because of a monster that was just cruel enough to hide behind a youth. It made Dean sick and it was only made worse by the relief he felt when the parents turned out to be monsters, too. At least then he didn’t have to explain to them how he’d taken their daughter away.

The parents had put up a fight, arterial spray striking Dean and coating his face, making him blink away blood as the taste seeped into his tongue. It left Dean feeling unsettled, skin crawling beneath red liquid turning tacky as Sam pulled him out of the house and to the impala so they could hightail it away from the blood-soaked house.

Dean pulls over at the first safe opportunity, breaking into a bathroom and immediately heading to a sink to splash water on his face. He wants to get rid of the sticky feeling, that metallic smell and the coppery tang in his mouth. He can’t stand the taste of blood, not when it comes with so many associations now.

Sam drank blood, Cas ate souls, maybe there was something wrong with Dean for sticking with mortal vices like booze and burgers. Sometimes it feels like it would have been easier to just go along with it, to maybe not have fought so hard all the time. Maybe if he’d done something differently, he wouldn’t be in this dingy bathroom with it’s flickering halogen lights.

But if things were different and Sam hadn’t gotten clean, would he still have a brother? Maybe the world would have ended. Maybe he would still have Cas.

Maybe Cas would still be gone, or maybe he would have found some way to stay as God. Dean doesn’t know, and he can’t know what would have happened because he chose to fight. He chose to help his brother stay clean, just like he chose not to listen to Cas.

He made his choices, just like he always does, and he will live with them just until the next time he bites it.

Dean shuts off the water and braces his hands on the sides of the sink, head falling forward and eyes closing. He breathes heavily through his mouth and tells himself the nauseous feeling in his stomach is from the lingering taste of blood in his mouth. He refuses to admit that his fingers are clenching at the chipped sink in an attempt to stave off the urge to lose control and start hyperventilating.

He hears a drop of water hit the sink and opens his eyes, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip as he tries to regulate his breathing through his nose. Dean keeps his eyes glued to the sink drain, watches as water falls in a steady stream of droplets that roll slowly down. He twists at the handles of the sink again, but they don’t budge and the faucet just keeps leaking. It’s entrancing and Dean can’t stop the images, can’t stop the what-ifs as he thinks about all the little things that add up to huge consequences.

When a drop of water that doesn’t come from the faucet hits the sink, Dean’s suddenly horrified. He grabs at the discoloured handles and turns them hard, opening the water up at full blast so it splashes inside the bowl.

The small drain can’t keep up with the water pressure and the sink slowly starts to fill up, but it’s not until the water begins to pour over the sides that Dean envisions bending over, sticking his face in the water and not coming back up.

~

Run, run, run. Now stop.

Deciding to track a Leviathan and ambush it is a fucking _stupid_ idea, which is really saying something when you consider all the stunts Dean’s pulled in what can be considered a lifetime of bad decisions.

He should have realized the moment he started feeling lucky that something was going to go momentously wrong. Finding a Leviathan was great news since Dean was all about taking the bastards down, but he should have realized things were going too smoothly when the Leviathan actually _fled._

These were the terrifying creatures that God created a separate place for just to give other forms of life a chance to survive, you shouldn’t expect them to run just because they were threatened with a water gun filled with soapy water.

Then again, when you’re a monster that’s been around since the beginning of time and you suddenly find out there’s something that can damage you, it’s not that unreasonable to take a minute out to reconsider things, like the fact that people have the power to hurt you.

It’s jarring when you find out you’re not invincible, after all.

Sam and Dean followed the Leviathan back to it’s hideout, relying on the unexpected pain to disorient the creature as they tracked it like it was just any old monster. They’d hurt it once and sent it on the run, so it would be injured when they caught up, and maybe they could kill it.

Or maybe they could get answers. Dean wasn’t too clear on which one he wanted more.

The Leviathan led them to a two-story house set down a long driveway just outside the city limits. It had probably belonged to the elderly man the Leviathan was inhabiting and it’s remote location seemed perfect for a monster to hang out since no one would be able to hear any victims scream. Which meant that no one else would be able to hear the Leviathan scream when they cornered it inside.

They sat and watched for a while, waited to see if there was any stir of activity in the house, maybe more Leviathans, but nothing went out or in. It was a worrying kind of quiet that neither of them liked and it spurred them into action, because if the Leviathan was resting, it might be the best odds they would ever have against one of the creatures.

They never should have allowed themselves to get so cocky, because their plan went to hell as soon as they walked into the second room of the house. The house didn’t hold just one Leviathan, but half a dozen, all of them giving predatory grins as they stared from every exit. Maybe they’d all decided to wait for them to show up, or maybe the first Leviathan had been bait all along, it didn’t really matter since they were trapped.

The Leviathan tossed them in a room upstairs for ‘safekeeping’, as they put it, which Sam suggested was their way of saying they needed time to vote on how to kill them. It was a depressing thought, imagining a group of ancient creatures plotting your demise, but it was also one of the best things that could have happened.

If there was such a thing as a school for hunters, Sam and Dean Winchester could have taught the class on escaping. It might have taken longer than they liked, but eventually they managed to make it outside of the house, dropping down onto a shed roof and quickly jumping from that to run for the cover of the trees.

They could hear the Leviathans’ shouts behind them as they poured out of the house, undoubtedly alerted to their prisoner’s escape by the landing on the roof. The Leviathan didn’t sound enraged by the escape, but rather excited, as if they were about to engage in an amusing pastime such as foxhunting, with the brothers serving as the foxes.

It was Sam that said they should split up once they hit tree cover, and Dean should really stop listening to Sam since he was the one that kept coming up with all the brilliant ideas that got them into trouble. Sam said something else about meeting somewhere at a certain time, then he was turning away, his long legs leading him in another direction, one away from Dean.

Dean wanted to shout out, wanted to tell Sam that splitting up sounded like a dumb idea, but he kept quiet and kept moving. Things were going to end badly, he knew that without even thinking about it, he just didn’t know how because life had proven to him countless times before that there was no limit to the things that could go wrong. He didn’t expect to hear the voice.

That’s why Dean’s running in a panic, because he knows that voice.

That voice is the reason why tracking down a Leviathan is a bad idea, because actions have consequences and he wasn’t ready for this one yet. He doesn’t need to look back, doesn’t need to see what’s behind him because he knows it could just as easily be in front of him or beside him.

And it’s definitely an ‘it’, because it’s not him. It’s just a stolen voice and a stolen body and it doesn’t mean anything anymore, it’s pointless, so why does it fucking hurt?

“Dean,” the voice calls out, dragging his name into multiple syllables and sounding so close that Dean almost expects to feel breath on his neck.

“Fuck,” Dean says in surprise as he trips over a tree root and goes sprawling, scratching his hands when he tries to catch himself.

He throws a quick look over his shoulder as he pushes himself up because he can’t help it and it’s just as chilling as he’d expected. It doesn’t matter the distance because he knows the figure, knows it even without the trenchcoat.

There’s a half-strangled sob that comes out of his throat before he kicks forward, running again and trying to get away from the thing inside Castiel. It’s not right that he should see him again like this, not when Dean doesn’t know if there’s something he can do to help. If soapy water can hurt a Leviathan, maybe window cleaner can force them out of a body and save their host, he doesn’t know if it will work, doesn’t know that it won’t.

“Dean, why are you running so fast? Do you want to trip again and hurt yourself?” The Leviathan calls out in a cheery tone, a sound completely unnatural coming from Castiel’s voice.

Dean doesn’t want things to end like this, not when a bottle of Windex could give him Cas back. He doesn’t want to do something that will kill Cas, doesn’t want to die looking up at his angel’s face. Dean also doesn’t want to admit there might not be an answer, that having the Leviathan inside the vessel might have burned Castiel away.

He doesn’t want to think he might have lost his chance at saving Castiel the moment he refused to listen.

“Dean, come on, don’t you want to have fun?”

If Castiel’s gone, that’s it. One way or another, it’s Dean’s fault because he didn’t listen and Dean can’t change that. He didn’t listen when Cas asked for help, or when he was warned about everything Cas had swallowed up and now all he can do is listen to the Leviathan using Castiel’s voice as he tries to prevent the inevitable. He’s a mouse running from a snake and there’s nowhere to hide.

“Dean, don’t you know that I’ve missed you?”

Dean’s tired of running. If no one’s found a way of getting a Leviathan out of a body or keeping them dead yet, they aren’t going to. He’s tired of feeling like things have finally shattered beyond repair and he’s tired of all the sharp edges cutting him up inside. Alcohol doesn’t sew back the ribbons made out of his heart and he just wants to quit lying, even to himself.

Dean stops running.

“Yeah,” Dean whispers, staring down at the forest floor. “I’ve missed you, too.”

Dean turns around the the Leviathan is right there, staring at him with Castiel’s face and Dean can almost believe for a second until the expression goes wrong. The mouth stretches into a grin far too wide as the Leviathan raises his hand and Dean holds stock still as fingers reach out and finally (again) brush against his face.

Dean sits bolt upright in his bed, gasping and body coated with sweat as he jerks his head around frantically, looking for any sign of a Leviathan. The room is clear and the only person he can see is Sam safe in his bed, one arm flung out to the side and mouth wide open. Dean lets out a sound that’s half pant and half subdued hysterical laugh as he rubs at his face with his hand. That’s when a sound other than the outside traffic registers to his ears.

There’s an old-style clock keeping the time on the wall and it’s second hand is making a noise with each jerking motion. Dean can hear Sam snoring just a few feet away and he can also hear an occasional car pass by, just like he can hear the air conditioner in the corner of the room struggling to keep the small space cool. He can also still hear every tiny movement of the second hand as it moves across the clock face.

Deans pulls his gun from beneath his pillow and shoots the fucking clock.

Tick.

Tick.

_Tock_


End file.
